Humours, part 1

Based on the development of ideas initiated by Hippocrates (c 460-377 BC), the humours were considered to be the key fluids in the body. In the 18th century it was believed one had four types of humours and that these needed to be in balance in order for one to be healthy. The humours were blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile (choler). Each humour had its own color and life-sustaining purpose. Blood was red and the source of vitality. Phlegm (any kind of colorless secretion) was pale and acted as a lubricant and a coolant. It was evidenced in times of cold and fever, and was visible in sweat and tears. Black bile contributed to melancholy and darkened other fluids like blood, stools, or skin. Yellow bile was the gastric juices, which are needed for digestion.

What someone looked like -- darker, paler, more ruddy -- and their general mood -- were affected by their humors. "Thus someone generously endowed with blood would present a florid complexion and have a sanguine temperament, being lively, generous, and robust, though perhaps given to impulsive hot-bloodedness. Someone cursed with surplus choler or bile might be choleric or acrimonious, quick to anger and marked by an acid tongue. Likewise with phlegm (pale, and phlegmatic, lazy, inert, and cool in character) and black bile (one with swarthy looks and a saturnine disposition -- that is, sardonic, suspicious, prone to look on the dark side)." (Porter, Roy. Blood & Guts: A Short History of Medicine. (London: Penguin Books, 2002), 25-27.)  The drawings above are from 1759 and "demonstrate" a woman of phlegmatic temperatment and a man of melancholy temperament (Source: Wellcome Library, London).

This is where we have the idea of a "black mood," or someone looking at us "darkly," and the suspiciousness of darker skinned persons than ourselves. A flagrant example of this was the darkening of OJ Simpson's mug shot on the cover of Time magazine on June 27, 1994. But I digress.

When the humours were unbalanced, the person was considered to have "dis-ease," in other words, they were out of ease. The physician or medical practitioner would make a disease diagnosis and determine a treatment based on the patient's primary humour (based on their temperament, appearance and astrological chart reading). They would need to have an understanding of the complicated relationships between the humours and their associated elements and qualities in order to treat effectively. Black bile was earth, yellow bile was fire, blood was air, and phlegm was water. Therefore, if a patient's disease was determined to be on the spectrum between yellow bile and blood, for example, the practioner would prescribe hot and dry treatments ("The Four Humours" display at The Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garrett; London, viewed 15 October 2012).

Humours not only affected one physically, but emotionally beyond one's basic personality. What we call "clinical" or "major" depression now, was labeled "melancholy" then, which came from the Greek words melon (black) and colim (humour). (Arnold, Catherine. Bedlam: London and Its Mad (London: Simon & Schuster, 2008), 67).